Three O’Hare Tire Blowouts Hit a Construction-Capped Airport

Two passenger jets blew tires at Chicago O’Hare on Aug. 17, three hours apart, and the FAA opened a review of both landings. American Airlines Flight 386, a Boeing 737-800 from LaGuardia, reported two blown tires after a 2 p.m. arrival. United Airlines Flight 739, an Airbus A320 from Omaha, reported tire damage around 5:15 p.m.

Nobody was hurt. Both cabins left by stairs and bus. The landings sat on different runways and different airplane types, at a hub the FAA had already limited to 2,708 flights a day because airfield construction has stripped out spare capacity.

Two Jets Stopped Three Hours Apart at O’Hare

American 386 pushed back from LaGuardia at 1:02 p.m., close to an hour behind its 12:11 p.m. slot, and touched down at 1:59 p.m., according to Simple Flying’s flight-data reconstruction. The FAA told Fox News Digital the crew reported two blown tires after landing around 2 p.m. Fire trucks rolled on the jet. Passengers used portable stairs and were bused to the terminal.

Air traffic control audio obtained by NBC News, and later quoted by the New York Post, captured the tone on the frequency. “America 386, you require any assistance,” a controller asked. “I heard you just blown a tire.” Another transmission put the airplane stationary with debris on the pavement: “Runway 1-0 center is closed, our guy is busy.” ABC News said the runway closure and debris also forced some arrivals into go-arounds.

The 737-800, registered N844NN, was taken out of service. An American spokesperson said first responders met the airplane “out of an abundance of caution,” that customers were bused to the terminal, and that maintenance would inspect the jet. “We thank our team members for their professionalism and we apologize to our customers for their experience,” the airline said.

United 739 left Omaha at 4:18 p.m., more than an hour behind its 3:09 p.m. departure, and landed at 5:22 p.m., 22 minutes behind the 5 p.m. schedule, Simple Flying reported. The FAA put the crew report at about 5:15 p.m. United confirmed to Fox News Digital that 121 passengers and five crew were aboard, and that nobody was injured. The carrier’s statement was shorter: after arriving, Flight 739 “sustained tire damage,” and customers left on airstairs and buses.

The A320-200, N4901U, first flew in January 2006 and came to United from China Southern in 2018. Simple Flying said the tire burst as the airplane left the runway, on the left main gear. The airport, the outlet added, checked for debris and said the two Monday events happened in different parts of the field.

Chicago Logged Four Tire Failures in Two Weeks

Monday was the loud afternoon. It was not the first Chicago tire event in August. A United 737-900 had already aborted a takeoff at O’Hare four days earlier, and a Southwest 737 had already rolled out at Midway on both nose-gear tires two weeks before that. CBS Chicago later reported that the FAA said the three O’Hare cases ran on different runways.

On Aug. 13, another pilot on the frequency told controllers there were “lots of chunks of tire going down the runway,” ABC News reported, citing ATC.com audio. The FAA told NBC 5 that arrivals into O’Hare were delayed by an average of 25 minutes as of 3:50 p.m. because a disabled airplane was occupying a runway. United said it would move the Phoenix cabin onto another jet later that day.

Midway’s Aug. 3 landing had the same ending with a smaller delay. Southwest said both nose-gear tires on Flight 1243 “lost air pressure while landing,” and mechanics changed them before the tow. CBS Chicago said the Chicago Fire Department called an EMS Plan 1 and sent five ambulances; nobody was taken to a hospital. ABC7 Chicago quoted passenger Mya Castro smelling burnt rubber after the airplane stopped short of the gate, and passenger Brian Rigsby seeing smoke at the nose. WGN reported Midway’s public dashboard still showed average delays under 15 minutes by 8:30 a.m., with no cancellations posted.

The FAA Already Caps O’Hare at 2,708 Flights

A blown tire is designed to be survivable. Modern jets carry multiple wheels on each main-gear truck, so one failure is supposed to leave the airplane on the pavement. The bill shows up in the next hour, when a closed runway, a jet stuck off gate, and a bus convoy hit a field that already has no spare movement room.

O’HARE’S SUMMER LIMITS

• Daily cap: The FAA set 2,708 scheduled operations a day at O’Hare for summer 2026, arrivals and departures counted together.
• What carriers wanted: By March, published peak-day plans had climbed above 3,080 operations, the agency said, using Cirium schedule data.
• Last summer’s peak: Daily scheduled operations in summer 2025 topped out at about 2,680.
• How long it lasts: The original cap ran May 17 through Oct. 24, 2026. A July order then pushed the limit to October 30, 2027.

The April order said unapproved schedules would exceed the airfield’s capacity because of “airport construction and competitive scheduling dynamics” between the two largest carriers. The text is blunt about the surface: the cap is meant to cut “surface movement in the constrained taxiway environment” and to stop delay from spilling across the national system. A July follow-on extends the O’Hare cap through 2027, because the construction projects that forced the limit are expected to run through summer 2027. The FAA wrote that “significant delay and operational disruption would occur” if the order expired on the first timetable.

Carriers had already been told the math. A March meeting notice put the conflict in public: the FAA invited airlines and the Chicago Department of Aviation to talk down schedules topping 3,080 flights a day on peak dates. That proposed peak was a 14.9 percent jump from a peak day in summer 2025. The city still wants growth. Travelers are flying through an airfield that federal traffic managers already judged too tight for the planned bank.

That is why a tire event that ends with everyone walking off still moves the airport. Aug. 13 needed a runway long enough for a rejected takeoff and a bus fleet for 167 people. Aug. 17 needed Runway 10 Center closed, go-arounds, two jets pulled from the evening bank, and two more bus runs. The safety outcome was clean. The operations outcome is the one a capped hub cannot hide.

What Investigators Check After a Blown Tire

The FAA has not said the Monday failures share a cause, and the mix of types argues against a single bad batch. American’s jet was a 737-800 delivered in 2010. United’s was an A320 that first flew in 2006. United’s earlier abort was a 737-900. Southwest’s Midway case was a nose-gear pair, not a main-gear landing burst. Three O’Hare runways, four airframes, three airlines.

Heat is on every briefing card and was a weak fit for that Monday. National Weather Service climate data compiled by Iowa State University put O’Hare’s official high on Aug. 17 at 80 degrees, right on the normal mean, with only a trace of rain. Peter Greenberg, the CBS News travel expert, still listed temperature with wear and aircraft weight as the usual mix, and said reviewers will pull manufacturing files and the dates those tires were last rotated and retreaded. “They should be interested, I’m interested, I want to know what happened, but if you give it the idea of 47,000 planes in the air today and not much happened, I’ll go with that,” he said.

WHAT THE TIRE REVIEW USUALLY COVERS

• Inflation and heat: The FAA’s tire care and maintenance practices circular tells operators to treat inflation, installation, and heat as airworthiness items, not ramp trivia.
• Retread history: Airline tires are built to be retreaded. Separate FAA rules for retreading aircraft tires set how shops inspect, repair, and qualify that work.
• Pavement and debris: Controllers closed 10 Center for debris after American 386. Investigators also look for foreign objects, joint hardware, and construction leftover, the same class of problem that has cut tires at other airports when a raised plate or failed filler sits in the rollout path.
• Brakes and weight: Locked wheels, antiskid faults, and a heavy landing all dump extra energy into the rubber in a few seconds of spin-up.

Retreaded tires are normal in airline service when the carcass passes inspection. They are not a secret defect by themselves. Any serious review will still open those shop records, including which vendor last touched the failed units, because that is where a pattern would show up if one exists. Until the FAA says so, a contractor rumor is a lead, not a cause.

Passengers Sat Through the Bang and the Thump

Steven Hill was on the American arrival. He told CBS Chicago the cabin stayed seated after the noise, and that the wait felt like 30 or 40 minutes before stairs and buses. His worry was the location, not a fire in the cabin.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was a loud bang and after that we heard, more instead of a smooth rolling noise, we heard a thump, thump, thump, thump.

Steven Hill, passenger on American 386, CBS Chicago

“I was most nervous about just being sitting there on an active runway and knowing that anything could happen,” Hill said. He also asked the question the pavement theory keeps raising: whether the problem was the tires or “something on the taxiway.” The FAA’s line that the three O’Hare events used different runways is the cleanest answer that public record currently supports. It does not tell Hill why his landing gear failed. It does tell connecting passengers that a single torn strip of concrete is a poor fit for the week.

The human remainder is ordinary and slow. A cabin sits, then walks down stairs, then waits for a bus that was not in the itinerary. Bags may or may not follow on the same timeline. The airplane that was supposed to fly the next bank is now a maintenance job. On Aug. 13 that also meant 161 people bound for Phoenix needed a second hull. On Aug. 17 it meant two more jets dropped out of a Monday evening at a hub that federal traffic managers had already declared oversubscribed.

Scanner Traffic Flags Another Jet on Taxiway Bravo

On Saturday, Aug. 22, Chicago scanner reports described American Airlines Flight 3199, a Boeing 787 from Phoenix, stopping on Taxiway Bravo at A14 with two blown tires and deplaning there. That account has not been matched in a public FAA statement in the material reviewed for this article, so it stays in the unconfirmed column. If it holds, it would be a fifth Chicago tire event in three weeks, and a wide-body this time.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The Monday pair: American 386 and United 739 both landed with tire damage on Aug. 17, about three hours apart, with no injuries reported.
• The wider week: United 455 aborted a takeoff at O’Hare on Aug. 13 after tire damage, and Southwest 1243 lost both nose-gear tires at Midway on Aug. 3.
• Split pavement: The FAA said the three O’Hare events happened on different runways.
• The cap: O’Hare is limited to 2,708 scheduled operations a day while airfield construction continues.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A shared cause: The FAA has not tied the failures to one mechanical defect, one vendor, or one piece of debris.
• Retread work: Shop records are a standard review item. No official finding has named a retread or a contractor.
• The Aug. 22 787: Scanner traffic described American 3199 on Taxiway Bravo with two blown tires. The FAA has not posted a matching public confirmation here.

As of Aug. 26 the FAA had not released findings on the Monday landings. The airplanes stopped, the people walked, and a capped airfield absorbed another round of buses and closed pavement without a spare hour to give back.